Open AccessTactile discrimination of grating orientation: fMRI activation patterns
Author(s) -
Zhang Minming,
Mariola Erica,
Stilla Randall,
Stoesz Mark,
Mao Hui,
Hu Xiaoping,
Sathian K.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
human brain mapping
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.005
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1097-0193
pISSN - 1065-9471
DOI - 10.1002/hbm.20107
Subject(s) - intraparietal sulcus , premotor cortex , psychology , functional magnetic resonance imaging , neuroscience , posterior parietal cortex , frontal eye fields , postcentral gyrus , parietal lobe , superior parietal lobule , middle frontal gyrus , superior temporal sulcus , anatomy , eye movement , medicine , dorsum , saccade
Grating orientation discrimination is employed widely to test tactile spatial acuity. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural circuitry underlying performance of this task. Two studies were carried out. In the first study, an extensive set of parietal and frontal cortical areas was activated during covert task performance, relative to a rest baseline. The active regions included the postcentral sulcus bilaterally and foci in the left parietal operculum, left anterior intraparietal sulcus, and bilateral premotor and prefrontal cortex. The second study examined selective recruitment of cortical areas during discrimination of grating orientation (a task with a macrospatial component) compared to discrimination of grating spacing (a purely microspatial task). The foci activated on this contrast were in the left anterior intraparietal sulcus, right postcentral sulcus and gyrus, left parieto‐occipital cortex, bilateral frontal eye fields, and bilateral ventral premotor cortex. These findings not only confirm and extend previous studies of the neural processing underlying grating orientation discrimination, but also demonstrate that a distributed network of putatively multisensory areas is involved. Hum Brain Mapp, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.